Politicians push veteran ‘buyback bill’

State Assemblyman Brian Curran held a press conference at the Dough Boy monument, just north of the Lynbrook Long Island Rail Road station, on Feb. 19 to voice his support for the Veterans buyback bill that has been vetoed twice by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the past two years.

“Both in 2014 and 2015, the Veteran Buyback Bill overwhelmingly passed both the Assembly and the Senate,” Curran said, addressing a group that included a number of local veterans as well as Lynbrook Mayor Bill Hendrick, Deputy Mayor Alan Beach, Village Trustee Ann Marie Reardon, Police Chief Joseph Neve, Republican state senatorial candidate Chris McGrath and three of Curran’s fellow assemblymen, Joseph Saladino, Edward Ra and Michael Montesano. “Every elected official here today has been a sponsor of this legislation and supports its passage fully.”

Former Lynbrook Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander Pat Cardone said he was pleased that so many local politicians have shown support for the bill, known officially as the Veterans Equality Act. “The politicians who think they don’t have to answer to veterans’ needs anymore because there’s not a big worry — they’re not the constituents they have to go get a vote to win — they’re in for a rude awakening,” Cardone said.

Current law allows active members of the New York state public retirement system to purchase, or buy back, credits for time served in the military for up to three years of service if they were honorably discharged, have five years of existing public pension credit, and served during certain periods in selected countries. For example, the law permits buybacks for veterans who served during hostilities in Lebanon, Grenada or Panama, but not Afghanistan. The Veterans Equality Act, would update eligibility requirements to be more inclusive.

The legislation would also remove restrictions that prevent women from being eligible for the pension credit because of past military policy, in effect until 2013, that barred them from being deployed to military conflicts.

After Cuomo’s second veto of the bill, last October, Curran said that the governor indicated that the 2016-17 state budget would incorporate funding for the bill — but no such plans were outlined when the proposed state budget was released on Jan. 13.

“The governor’s failure to include this legislation and appropriate funding in his proposed budget is either a broken promise or an inexcusable attempt to use this issue as a chip in budget negotiations,” Curran said last Friday, adding that although Cuomo’s funding concerns were warranted, the spending plan still managed to include “many costly initiatives.”

With the final state budget due on April 1, Curran and his Assembly colleagues encouraged people to remain vocal about the issue. Curran also mentioned that representatives of the governor contacted him before the press conference to assure him that progress was being made on the bill’s passage despite its exclusion from the drafted budget.

“A veteran’s a veteran,” said Lynbrook VFW Commander Patrick Nealon. “You stood up, you raised your hand, you went to where they told you to go. Some guys were sent overseas; some guys weren’t sent overseas. Some guys went into combat, some guys didn’t. But it doesn’t change the fact that you served.”